But both teams came away from Tuesday’s season-opening 0-0 tie at Bennett Field happy, if not completely satisfied.

“We would have liked to win but we played well, we moved the ball well,” Waubonsie Valley midfielder Paige Filipek said. “So we’ll just keep working on it and we’ll get the goals.”

The goals no doubt will come often for Filipek and the Warriors if they continue to possess the way they did in this match. The visitors dominated the action with the accurate passing expected of such a veteran club but rarely seen in season openers.

Waubonsie forced the Lions to chase for much of the contest and rarely was without the ball for more than 10 seconds. That wasn’t too surprising considering the Warriors return seven Division I players from a squad that finished third at the state finals, while the Lions have just three returning full-time starters off a team that went 19-4 and made it to the supersectional last spring.

“The result, yes. The defensive effort, yes,” Lanspeary said. “Some of the stuff we did in counterattacks I thought was good, and we were dangerous at times, but we need to start possessing the ball.

“Playing Waubonsie, and with this many new players, we knew we would have to rely today on defense and counterattacks, but for the first game against that quality of an opponent, I’m pretty happy.”

With the ball in her end of the field for most of the match, Lyons goalie Lidia Breen got a pretty good look at just how good the Warriors are. But the senior co-captain was up to the task, directing an inexperienced back line with consummate patience and coming up with six saves to earn Chicagoland Soccer MVP of the Match honors.

“We had a really good performance defensively,” Breen said. “I don’t think I could have done it without the defense out there being as solid as they were.

“I think we’re happy with the tie. I think we definitely felt like we could have scored a few goals at the end. We had some chances, so we’re not 100 percent happy with the tie, but going into this we didn’t really know what to expect.

"We were just hoping to get a gauge of where we were, and tying a team that is as good as Waubonsie is pretty good.”

Breen made a jumping save on Morgan Kemerling’s header off a Grace Anderson corner kick midway through the first half and also stopped Maggie Roe’s shot from the middle of the box.

But Breen really shined in the second half when the Warriors began to wear down the Lyons defense and outshot their hosts 10-0. Breen stopped the dangerous Filipek twice.

“I was yelling a lot,” Breen said. “We had Sheila [Murphy] and [freshman] Catherine [Johnson] really try and stay back and stay back on their marks.

“We play a 4-3-3, which allows those outside defenders go up more, but we kind of held them back a little bit more today because they were sending so many people forward that it would have been just counterintuitive for our defenders to go forward. We would have been caught on the counters. We had them holding back to mark and watch those overlap runs.”

Waubonsie Valley created plenty of potential scoring plays in the middle of the field, with Maddie Pokora in particular sending through balls into dangerous spaces for Filipek and Roe to run onto.

Filipek, a junior playing in her first high school game in nearly two years after missing last season with a torn ACL, took half of Waubonsie’s shots and seemed to get better as the match went on.

But her accuracy was just a smidge off on several shots from outside the box and a 35-yard free kick. She missed two shots just wide of the post and another inches over the crossbar.

“I really missed [playing],” Filipek said. “It was hard sitting out last season, but I’m glad to be back and better, so I’m ready to go.

“(Today) felt really good. I’ve just got to work on my shots, get them down and on frame.”

Roe, who broke into the starting lineup as a freshman, had a good start to her sophomore campaign and squeezed off three shots, just missing the right post on a sliding shot from 15 yards out off a long pass from Filipek with 4:20 remaining.

Despite the inability to dent the net, Waubonsie Valley coach Julie Bergstrom was satisfied with the performance.

“I think we did a lot of things,” she said. “It is the first game so [offense] is something that you’ve got to build up. You’re not going to get it right away. We had some opportunities.”

So, too, did the Lions. They were few and far between, but the hosts had arguably the best developed scoring chance, and it nearly got them a victory.

Freshman forward Mary Devine drove aggressively to the left endline and slid a pass across the goal mouth that was intended for junior Grace Salvino, who was open for a tap-in goal. But Waubonsie senior goalie Emma Rigby, who had little to do for much of the match, alertly dove out to cut it off with 2:16 to go.

With the Iowa-bound Rigby, a four-year starter, between the pipes and at least two veteran stars on each line in front of her, the Warriors appear primed for another great season.

“We definitely want to make a good run for state,” Filipek said. “We want to take care of our area first because if we can do that then we know that we can go further.

“We lost some good players [to graduation], obviously, but now everyone else needs to step up a bit, and we all need to come together and work out the places we’re missing. It will come together.”

“Every year is a new start, a new team,” Bergstrom said. “We approach every year one game at a time and hope you’re better today than you were yesterday.”

That will be Lyons’ approach as well, though the future is less clear than Waubonsie’s. Breen, forward Margaret Lynch, midfielder Kristen Janicki and defender Izy Scott are the only players with previous starting experience.

“We’re a work in progress,” Lanspeary said. “We’re trying to figure stuff out.

“We’ve got good players. It’s a matter of getting them to work well together and us trying to figure out who helps us best where, try to utilize their strengths.

“But you can see it starting to jell a little bit more at each practice. It will just take a little bit of time.”

Breen agreed. She was part of the most experienced LT team in Lanspeary’s tenure last spring and now will help lead the most inexperienced squad.

“After watching today I definitely think we have the talent to go far in the postseason and succeed this entire season,” Breen said. “Last year what was so great was we had the talent but we also had this cohesiveness on the team because everybody was so mature and had been playing for so long.

“This year I think we’re going to be doing a lot of bonding off the field to try to get that sense of cohesiveness and team atmosphere back, because I think that translates onto the field a lot.”